It turns out that Mozilla calling their renewed deal with Google a “significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement” was a bit of an understatement. According to a report from AllThingsD, it’s worth $300 million a year.
The deal was announced on Tuesday, and followed a degree of agonizing as to whether Google would retain their spot as the Firefox browser’s search engine of choice. It has now transpired that Microsoft and perhaps surprisingly, Yahoo, were also bidding for the privilege.
The $300 million bid that won the contract is good for three years too, meaning by keeping Google as its default search engine, Mozilla will net $900 million before needing to go through the process once more. Compared to the estimated $100 million Google contributed to Mozilla in 2010, it’s a very big increase.
As far as the other bidders are concerned, Microsoft hoped to grab a boost in market share for Bing, but obviously couldn’t better Google’s figure, despite its bid being called “aggressive.” It’s not clear whether Yahoo even got as far as giving Mozilla a number, after the deal was “determined to be too costly” by the company.
Firefox still commands 25 percent of the web browser market, but has recently been caught up by Google Chrome, which as of the beginning of December, matched that 25 percent. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still holds the number one slot though, with around 40 percent market share.
